NYC Homelessness Surges To The "Highest Levels Since The Great Depression"

With each passing week the level of homelessness in New York City continues to surge to new record highs. In fact, the number of homeless people checking into NYC shelters each night is up 85% just since 2010 and currently stands at the highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Ironically, the increase in homelessness experienced during the "great recession" of 08/09 was just a blip on the radar compared to the past five years as residential rental rates in NYC have soared.

As CBS points out, while some on the city council of New York City have called for more government support to curb homelessness, efforts taken by Mayor Bill de Blaso have been largely ineffective so far.

The number of homeless people living in New York City has reached a record-high.

“It’s definitely something that we cannot stand for as a city,” NYC Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito said.

In an interview with CBS2, Viverito offered a number of suggestions, including the expansion of the “Living In Communities” (LINC) voucher program that provides money to move families out of a shelter and into permanent housing. But, she said there’s a hitch.

“I think the challenge that we’ve seen with the current voucher program, subsidy program, the LINC program, is for a very short period of time, there may be some hesitancy by landlords to engage with the city on it,” she said.

The week before, former NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who now runs a well-respected homeless program called “WIN,” called for appointing a czar to oversee the creation of permanent housing options.

Viverito said there is no need to create a new position.

“I think we have to not keep adding layers of bureaucracy here,” she said. “I think we have to look at what we have in place.”

As the Coalition for the Homeless points out, while the number of sheltered individuals in NYC is at it's highest levels since the 1930s, there are 1,000s of "unsheltered" homeless that are also sleeping in public spaces each night making it impossible to tally exactly how many New Yorkers are actually homeless.

In recent years, homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Research shows that the primary cause of homelessness, particularly among families, is lack of affordable housing. Surveys of homeless families have identified the following major immediate, triggering causes of homelessness: eviction; doubled-up or severely overcrowded housing; domestic violence; job loss; and hazardous housing conditions.

Each night thousands of unsheltered homeless people sleep on New York City streets, in the subway system, and in other public spaces. There is no accurate measurement of New York City’s unsheltered homeless population, and recent City surveys significantly underestimate the number of unsheltered homeless New Yorkers.

African-American and Latino New Yorkers are disproportionately affected by homelessness. Approximately 58 percent of New York City homeless shelter residents are African-American, 31 percent are Latino, 7 percent are white, less than 1 percent are Asian-American, and 3 percent are of unknown race/ethnicity.

Meanwhile the number of homeless families has also nearly doubled since 2006...

...and includes over 24,000 children sleeping in shelters each night.

Finally, just illustrate the dire consequences of New York's skyrocketing rents we offer up the following statistics from Mayor Bill De Blasio's Fiscal 2016 "Mayor's Management Report" highlighting a 42% increase in applications for "Emergency Rent Assistance" from New York City families at risk of losing their housing.

If this is what a "recovery" looks like to Obama we would certainly like to better understand how he would define a recession.

You can count on DeBlasio trying to figure out a way to tax it tho...that'll get those damned sticky low prices back up to the inflationary levels whackademics always spew about in their Keynesian pricing models!

Talked to a friend, yesterday, who lives in Pueblo, Co. Pueblo was once a mobbed up steel and railroad city, but today is it a welfare reserve. The well paying steel manufacturing jobs and railroad jobs are long gone. The city itself has turned Latino, but these folks are not Mexicans. They have lived in the southwest since the 1500s, and, without government subsidies, many of these folks would be homeless.

The city turned Latino because there was white flight out to Pueblo West, a high desert town where white folks built ranch style houses on acre lots. In the middle of Pueblo West lies the reservoir, which is large enough for boating activities. What my friend told me is that there are many storage units in Pueblo West, but now they are storing homeless families instead of furniture and boxes. Folks are living in them and there is no running water, heat or air conditioning. She told me that her church now feeds 250 families out there. She also told me that in the City of Pueblo, itself, tent cities are springing up along the river. Just imaging if the 25% of American children, who are now on food stamps, were cut off. America would look like the 1930s again, with bread lines and soup kitchens. Obama's got to have a pair of brass balls to be bragging about this economy.

So New York City has a mayor with feet almost as big as his mouth, a fellow who can’t quite figure out how to get to work on time or what to do when he arrives, whose poll numbers have been underwater since roughly two weeks after he took office — and who’s now having a rant at The New York Post.

He hired an advocate, not an expert, to run the city’s social services. No surprise that Grand Central Terminal is once again up to its scuppers in vagrants and worse.

He padded the topmost echelon of his administration with fellow Service Employees International Union/1199 alumni. No surprise, then, that 1199 is a vector in at least two de Blasio administration scandals — the Rivington House nursing home deed transfer and the Long Island College Hospital land conversion.

And so it goes. Covering the de Blasio administration is like throwing darts at a wall covered with party balloons: Just about every toss, something’s going to pop.

There’s the police-corruption scandal; the campaign-donation probe; the not-for-profit solicitation outrage; and just now The Post reports that de Blasio has stocked his personal staff with 264 taxpayer-funded “special advisers” — that is, operatives who shortly will peel off and kick-start his 2017 re-election campaign. Your cost: $18.7 million a year. (How many child-welfare case workers might that buy?)

Deekra (dear), America WILL still look like the 1930 again only because the country is running out of money and soon many if not most of these entitlements are going to dry up. Look carefully, it is already starting to happen.

Let's look at the bright side of things, shall we?
- The Urban Outdoorsmen ("Homeless" sounds demeaning) are healthier than ever! When they go to restaurant dumpsters, they can be assured that those table scraps are free of trans-fats and are low in sodium.
- Obamaphone reception has never been stronger
- They all qualify for free birth control
- The shelters have lead-free paint
- No more pesky paper bags to deal with

Hillary, Bloomberg and Obama have fought the good fight for our most disadvantaged.

Surely progressives must be proud as this is typically a sign of their success.

They rely on dependents to secure their control, and the homeless are by far the most cost efficient version of that model....and they do always brag about big government afforded efficiencies, do they not?

We are trapped by our delusions, by the lies our leaders tell us. It has gone so far that truth is not only inconvenient and uncomfortable, but unaffordable.

We not only cannot HANDLE the TRUTH, we can't pay for it either. Our dependencies remove our ability to provide for ourselves. Instead of striving for better we are told to accept what is affordable. As this degrades we find that the affordable is less and less acceptable, but we also discover we have no alternatives. That is the true cost of dependency....something I'm sure the Indian leaders of their time understood very well. It was why they resisted reservations and domination as they knew it would destroy their culture, their people, which is why many chose to die in resistance. For some reason people of today just can't see it. I guess it is the boiling frog pot metaphor, We have simply become accustomed to the conveniences and luxury that dependency can provide, just not understanding that it has NEVER been sustainable.

Maybe they need to raise taxes and build more affordable housing. Seriously, I always wonder what the breaking point is for all these liberals who vote for this stuff in the first place. The saner ones leave I guess, leaving crazier and crazier behind. I remember visiting New York when I was a kid, in the late 70's and early 80's. It was a pretty scary place. No reason why it cannot revert back. Add in reduced policing and a recession, and it could get ugly, fast.

You are right about The saner ones leave I guess, leaving crazier and crazier behind.

You see the same thing happening across the US. Look at Colorado and Arizona for instance, all these "sane" libtards move away from the places they ruin and end up doing the same thing to formerly conservative (productive ) states. There should be a law that allows libtards to move wherever they want, but they can NEVER EVER vote or hold public office of any type. Theirs is a mental disorder.

Some of our relatives still make the annual "shopping Pilgrimage" from London to New York, but nowadays they are very careful to stay in the "upper-class" touristy areas.

A few years back, they (unwisely) decided to have a look around Manhatten - the "Super-Wealth Centre of the Universe", and they ended up (VERY briefly) in The Five Points . . . . . They got out of there VERY fast (on foot, since surprisingly (NOT) they were unable to SEE any taxicabs, let alone hail one). The photographs were certainly not what one usually expects from "The Big Apple", and it was very obvious that The Five Points had a major drug / violence problem (discarded syringes and plenty of "small round holes" in roller shutters, and doors).

It is the very familiar case of "Keeping up with the Joneses". If other members of their little social elite clique "go shopping in New York, Darling!" - they HAVE to do the same in order to maintain "appearances". Goes with the "His'n'Hers" BMW's with personalised registration plates.

"They" have their trappings of "success" - the flash cars, expensive holidays, "latest and greatest" consumer electronics, whilst being up to the eyeballs in debt (as are all the other members of their little elitist clique). "We" prefer our old-but-reliable cars, local trips / caravan holidays (neither of us will ever be able to see "all" of Australia - it's just too big), and our consumer electronics tend to be clearance lines that we got for the best price, rather than the lastest and greatest "big Brand" names.

We differ in another "unimportant" matter too - NO (i.e. zero) debt, and sufficient acreage to easily feed us both, irrespective of the vagaries of the Aussie climate.

Well that explains it. I have been to Sydney since we moved to Singapore and I must say that I was very impressed. I was afraid it would be an Anglo version of USA but it was quite the opposite. The people were well dressed, well spoken, helpful, curteous, and the food, while outrageously expensive, was bloody good!

It is the illusion of "other people's money" and that is as well their breaking point....once it is all gone.

Foolish people, especially liberals, have always fallen for the notion of doing good through the generosity of other people's money without realizing that the cost ALWAYS comes back on the bulk of the population. We see tax structures created that create this illusion....we will tax the rich, property owners, business, corporations, but NEVER ourselves. Meanwhile we watch as the price of everything except our wages climbs and the needs of the oppressed who have their lips and teeth firmly clinched upon our "nipples" of sustenance, only grows. Our jobs leave, our businesses fail and we find ourselves learning to read pictograph instruction booklets for every purchase as nothing is made in English speaking countries anymore. We shake our heads at public housing built and paid for with OUR earnings, soon become rubble because nobody cares, not the government, not the tenants, because it belongs to NOBODY. WE the taxpayers are NOBODY. Our wishes, our feelings, our well being is of no matter at all.

I recall 25 years ago, I was just getting my business off the ground and learning to deal with government rules and mandates. One was unemployment insurance,which seemed punitive. I called the government office to complain of the costs in that I was paying a premium to provide the insurance, yet if I had claim, they charged me for it. I was forced to pay it all back, either in lump sum or through increased rates. I asked what the premium was for if it didn't cover the loss and was told it was just overhead expense. As the business owner it didn't provide me any coverage, and when I pointed that out to the government minion, she quickly responded that as the business owner it was assumed I was smart enough to take care of myself. THAT is our system of government. We are either smart enough to take care of ourselves, and we are dumb enough to take care of everyone else. At some point you would think that people would catch on that when our government is implying that we need to care for the dumb ones, they see US a dumb. They are telling us to fend for ourselves, fund those who do not, as well as pay these government officials to force us to do it.

Actually it has been a lot longer than 8 years. USA's demise started in the late 70s and really started picking up toward the end of the Bill Clinton presidency. It gained traction during Bush's years and now with Obama it is truly beyond recall.

Not true. The eighties well into the nineties were roaring again. I was there. I lived it. The true downturn began with Bill Clinton's administration which itself enjoyed the accolades of economic success due to his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. Little did we know that Bill sold us out back then as did most if not all of his successors. The true downturn began with Bubba's administration.

We stayed in NYC (Queens) for one week in 2011 before we immigrated to Singapore (we had lived in USA for 20 years and decided it was time to get the hell out). Even then you could see homeless or semi-homeless - those living in cars and very cheap motels. But you had to go to the boroughs to see them. Now I have heard they are everywhere.

USA is truly a country in fast decline, and nothing nor anyone can stop it. Of course MSM would have you believe the opposite, but all these things such as homeless are yet another sign of the demise of America.

See, you admit that you were only in the States beginnining in the nineties. Yet your above post tell us that our downturn began in the seventites for which you were not here I presume. So, anything you say in any post is highly suspect. Don't give us bullshit history lessons. Most of us don't need it. We are the history lesson in the making.

Trump could win grand bonus points if he bought a building and allowed all these people to have a place to live (within some guidelines of course, but you get the gist of this gesture of magnanimity). Assured Trump Voters with the right carrot.

I fly in there for a two day weekly visit, then back to comfortable upstate New York. I take the A train from JFK back and forth and can tell you not only are there ridiculous numbers of homeless and beggars the other thing is the attire of the people in the subway is appalling. And 95 % non-white. Where are the people who actually wear business attire to work? There is something wrong - very VERY wrong with this economy....